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HOUSTON – When Michael Reeves of Ports-to-Plains gives the grand finale of his presentation to the Rotary Club in Dumas, Texas, he shows Rotarians two pictures.

The first, of Venezuela President Hugo Chavez hugging Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Then, a Canadian Mountie and Alberta Premier Alison Redford, decked out for the Calgary Stampede.

Who, he asks, would America rather do business with?

"Not only does (Redford) have a big cowboy hat on but she has a big belt buckle. In Texas, a big belt buckle has credibility -- it means you've either won a stock show, a rodeo or a wrestling championship of some sort," he says.

The point, Reeves says, is it's more stable and secure for the U.S. to trade with Canada than to rely on crude from the Middle East or Venezuela.

"Last year, when they had all that turmoil in Libya, the price of gas was spiking. Alberta changed premiers and we didn't see a blip when that was happening," Reeves says. "It's much better for us to have a energy relationship with Alberta."

Ports-to-Plains, the grassroots advocacy organization touting north-south transportation corridors, is comprised of mayors, city councils, county judges and economic development organizations concentrated in the path of the Keystone XL pipeline.

The group's members represent nine of the 12 top wind energy producing states.

"We're all-of-the-above on energy but we realize it takes the transportation infrastructure with access to pipeline, rail, the Gulf of Mexico and highways to develop it," Reeves says.

He's heralding the $7-billion Keystone that will bring 700,000 barrels of oil a day to feed crude-hungry refineries at the Texas Gulf Coast, as well as 20,000 manufacturing and construction jobs in the U.S. and $5.2 billion in tax revenue in corridor states.

"Many of our jobs are created from oilsands production, whether it's from oilfield equipment, pipe, steel or even mining trucks built down in Mexico and shipped up," Reeves says.

Ports-to-Plains members have been vocal in public hearings in Nebraska and before the U.S. State Department, where their testimony bears additional weight as residents of the Keystone corridor.

"A lot of us get our drinking water out of the Oglalla aquifer, and we're supportive," Reeves says, adding although Texans watch high school football while Albertans cheer junior hockey, Alberta and the Keystone corridor states are natural allies, with economies linked to oil and agriculture.

"Someone in Medicine Hat is going to have more in common with a rural community in West Texas than they would with someone in Toronto or Montreal. Someone in rural West Texas will have more in common with rural Alberta than they would with someone from L.A. or New York," Reeves says.

All that interconnectivity is a win-win, he says.

"If green energy takes off and we all go with electric cars and wind energy, we could ship Tim Horton's coffee down here in the pipeline -- which would be a winner for me," Reeves says.